Recently, the OECD released this report titled “Resolving Foreign Bribery Cases with Non-Trial Resolutions.” As stated in the report “non-trial resolutions refer to a wide range of mechanisms used to resolve criminal matters without a full court proceeding, based on an agreement between an individual or a company and a prosecuting or another authority.” This term is obviously broad and covers a range of alternatives and there is little in common with a plea agreement compared to a non-prosecution agreement.
The 200+ page report and its six chapters contain mounds of comparative information and data that will likely be of interest to anyone interested in how foreign bribery enforcement actions are resolved.
Yet despite this data dump, the report punts on several pressing questions associated with alternative resolution vehicles. This is hardly surprising given that “the country mentors who provided guidance and contributed to the drafting” of the report were largely government officials including DOJ, SEC and U.K. SFO personnel.
